We’re All Just Frogs in Hot Water

The Life-cycle of a Collapse-Aware Frog

We all know the boiling frog story. The idea is that a frog will allow itself to be boiled alive in a pot of water with a gradually increasing temperature. That story is often used as a metaphor for the inability of people to react to significant changes in their environment that occur gradually or to events that have become commonplace. No matter how severe the end result is going to be, as long as it happens over a spread-out period of time, allowing people to get used to it, then it becomes normalized. In modern times, the factual basis of the idea has been disproven of course, but it is still a very helpful metaphor to use when cautioning people to be mindful of even a slowly changing situation that is growing worse over time lest they end up feeling the heat too late.

Our collective situation as a species in regard to climate change is often compared to that frog in the pot. It’s an excellent analogy for how the changes in climate have been happening too gradually for us to appreciate the seriousness of the situation and act before it is too late. For most people, it seems to them that there has not really been much of an effect at all. Others, who have felt an impact, from whatever disaster may have struck them personally, are able to shrug it off as bad luck or just being caught up in the “normal” cycle of disasters that have always happened somewhere.

There are some who see it, though. With varying degrees of awareness, of course. In previous articles, I have argued that the scientific community is not really telling us frogs what we need to know. Much of the studies, reports, and so on coming out of various sources always seem to be “watered down,” either for political appeasement or to avoid being seen as alarmist. But I would say it is past time to be alarmed. The pot may be warm now due to the advancing effects of climate change, but at any time I fear the heat could be turned up very quickly.

Because what those scientific reports and studies also fail to mention is that they are created to calculate projections based solely on the science, and relying on things to continue at a measured steady pace. Do they account for the chances of something like a global pandemic springing up out of the blue? Or the kickoff of the largest war in Europe since WW2? Or what about the compounding likelihood of a CME like the Carrington Event happening again, something we are getting uncomfortably overdue for?

The answer is no, they do not. The projections for the future taking into account recent events have not even been studied yet, much less released. You can certainly find world crop projections and famine danger statistics from a variety of reputable sources, telling us how bad it could get in a few years, a decade, or a century. But what about the recent war in Ukraine? Massive battle in one of our world breadbaskets, was that factored in? Nope.

So, while that pot may be warming up gradually, I think the rate of heating may be accelerating, and frog legs may get put on the menu faster than expected.

Anyway, when it comes down to our individual comprehension of the impending global societal collapse, I have noticed that most of us seem to fit somewhere into something like a life cycle roughly divided into five stages. Just so happens to coincide with the life cycle of a frog’s development. And so, I now bring to you the life cycle of the Collapse-Aware Frog:

Stage One: The Egg.

Complete obliviousness. This is the stage at which a large majority of people seem to exist. For them, they don’t seem to see any fundamental problems with the world, or with the continuance of a “Business As Usual” approach to society. They probably experience some issues of their own, maybe financial struggles, or perhaps the impact on their lives of some natural disaster, but those are just shrugged off as bad luck, or at best some problems in human organization, behavior, or ethics that could easily be fixed with a few modifications to the rules of our society. For the most part, at least when it comes to the big issues facing our world, they are dead asleep. Eggs are sheltered from the early effects of collapse that those less fortunate are already starting to experience, and so they tend to live their lives happily unaffected. Occasionally they might react with a little bit of annoyance about elections, social progress (or lack of same), and might even grump about the state of the economy here and there. But that’s about it.

Stage Two: The Tadpole.

Lots of tadpoles out there. These people have seen that something is amiss in the world, for sure. Something about our changing world has affected them directly, and they may even decide that it is serious enough to “do something” about. Usually, they are limited to awareness of one or perhaps two of the multitude of fundamental problems the world is facing. Whether it’s biodiversity loss, global warming, resource depletion, peak oil, plastic pollution, over-fishing of the oceans,  runaway corporate greed, sociopolitical injustice, or any one of our many catastrophes in the making, there are only a couple of problems that seem to engage their attention to the exclusion of all else. People at this stage tend to become vehement activists for their cause, very vocal and active about it but remain blind to most others. (I’m lookin’ at you, PETA.) These are the ones who are all about the reduction of carbon emissions, but pay no attention to those of methane, perhaps. Or who are so focused on promoting the benefits of veganism to save us all from the hazards of animal agriculture that they fail to take into account things like growing fascism in government, for example. Like a cat after a laser pointer, they pay no attention to anything else outside of their tunnel vision which remains locked on their hot-button issues.

Stage Three: The Legged Tadpole.

These are people in a state of flux. Am I a tadpole? A frog? WTF is going on in the world? For these people, it is dawning on them that there are actually many problems with the world. As they consume more information from different sources, the awareness of how complex the issue of collapse is begins to grow. At this point, people tend to worry about the prioritization of the known problems in terms of their immediacy and degree of impact on both themselves and the world. Far-reaching issues may be put on the back burner in order to deal with what could happen soonest. People at this stage may often be reluctant to acknowledge new problems or those that won’t really get out of control for a while yet. They may feel that the problems facing us today are already complex enough, and the addition of any new concerns will only dilute the issues, and take attention away from focusing on solving the “most important” problems. The people of this froggish phase usually have more awareness of the interconnected problems than they do knowledge. But they start working to correct that and learn everything they can. The sheer plethora of information out there, both true and false, makes this a daunting task. Many may be led astray and coaxed back into the bliss of ignorance by reassurances that “everything is fine” from a variety of sources. Some will even latch onto false information and act in counterproductive ways. Confusion reigns supreme as those who are correct strive alongside those who are not, tainting all efforts. Sad to say, but not all tadpoles get to make it to the froggish life.

Stage Four: The Young Frog.

These people have found the path to the truth about the interconnectedness of all the many problems. The realization is hitting home that a solution to one macro-issue may worsen the problem in others, and for some solutions, even the new lack of a problem in one area will create its own problems elsewhere. Such as how some miraculous cessation of fossil fuel use would bring about an immediate economic crash and global famine.

This stage marks the transition to large-scale systemic-level ways of thinking. It also marks the transition from visualizing the situation in terms of a collection of individual problems to seeing it as a single overall predicament. And now, the possibility that there may not even be a solution to this predicament starts to set in, and fear begins to raise its head. Those people who have reached this stage of their development tend to withdraw from others, impatient with their lack of understanding, and instead seek out and meld into smaller circles of similarly developed young frogs in order to trade ideas and exchange insights in an effort to deepen their understanding of what’s going on. These circles are usually tight-knit and isolated from others, due in part to the level of understanding needed, but also simply because there just aren’t very many other frogs who have arrived at this depth of the pot.

Stage Five: The Adult Frog.

The jaded survivors of long lives in search of answers. These are those who have become used to feeling the pot grow warmer, and they have come to the realization that the crisis is one that encompasses every aspect of life and civilization. Everything we do, how we do it, our interactions with one another, as well as our treatment of the rest of the environment and the planet as a whole. With this dawning of truth, the floodgates open, and all of the problems are revealed to be intertwined in ways that can leave nothing exempt from consideration. The very concept of “solving” the issue has been seen through and inevitably cast aside as a wasted effort. These old frogs know that the end is now, and despite the various ideas that could possibly change things, or at least mitigate the fall a bit, they know that such changes will never be implemented in force, because they have seen exactly how the world works, and more importantly how the vast majority of people want it to work. Those who are not frogs at all just will not take “no” for an answer, and any attempt to cause even the slightest reduction in the growth of their comforts and luxuries, much less any actual sacrifice, will result in a greater backlash than ever imagined.

For those who grow to this final stage, there is a real risk that depression will set in. A complete loss of hope. After all, they have learned throughout life that our hope for tomorrow lies in our capacity to solve problems today. When no amount of human cleverness appears able to solve our predicament the possibility of hope can vanish like the light at the flip of a switch, leaving only the suffocating darkness of despair.

Becoming a Frog out of Water

How these collapse-aware frogs come to deal with the depression that comes with realization is a deeply personal issue. But it seems to me there are two general paths people take in response to the situation, two ways to jump out of the pot, as it were.  They are not mutually exclusive ways to go, and most of us will operate out of some mix of the two.  I write about them here as primary directions, because people seem to strongly identify in some fashion along these two lines. I refer to them as settlement and resistance.

Settling for the End

For those frogs who choose the path of settlement, all concerns about adaptation or survival tend to fall away, and the depression is dealt with by pulling it deep inside. Some may retreat into religion, austerity politics, or even embark on hedonistic journeys to “live it up” while they still can. Nihilism and antinatalism can become powerful factors for them, and they pretty much decide that things are either over or about to be, so why worry about it? For others, organized religion can be seen as part of the predicament rather than a valid response to it, much like politics.

Whatever their individual reaction, they have resigned themselves to death and accept the fact that there is no way to survive the coming collapse and no reason to want to go on after even if they could. In some cases, perhaps the lack of modern society and community is too much to bear, or maybe the majority of the comforts and conveniences of technological civilization are too important to live without. Many things in current life can cease to have meaning since it is all going down the drain anyway, why engage in politics, education, career, or even long-range planning? They become stoic and resigned to their fate, and they will either cease any efforts to try and get out of the pot, or they may take the route of trying to work towards the mitigation of the effects of collapse, hoping to make the end come more gradually over a longer period of time so that advanced civilization can be maintained as long as possible.

Suicide at some point is on the table for them, tragically, either as a quick end before, or as an escape from what they see will be hell on earth once the collapse comes. For many, giving up is both easier and more dignified, than trying to rebuild a destroyed world and all the horrors that come along with such a fall. It becomes about finding peace with the end and embracing the memories of the past and the time one has left.

Resisting the End

For those who are not inclined to choose such a settlement, either because of temperament or circumstance, the route of resistance offers its own set of attractions. Choosing resistance is about re-framing the whole thing in terms of survival, and the eventual rebuilding of something new on the ruins of the old world. The will to live becomes even more overriding than the original biological imperative, and defiance of fate gives them the strength to harden themselves against the coming difficulties. Their perception of collapse can often become one of rebirth, and therein they find the hope for a better world than the one previous generations of humanity foolishly destroyed. Those who have arrived at this point have no interest in hiding from or easing the painful truth, rather they wish to create a coherent personal plan for dealing with it. 

For someone taking this direction, it can be seen as an attempt to manifest their own will upon the world, on a profoundly personal level. Death is meant to be fought against, and the future wasteland holds no horrors too vile to face down. Some of those frogs who jump out of the pot this way can even find that they have gazed too long into the abyss and found it mirrored within themselves. They can become so hardened that much of their humanity is left by the wayside, and the attitude of kill or be killed gains too much prevalence in their psyche. They may even look forward to being the raiders and warlords of some future Mad Max scenario, where their anger and despair can be vented upon those others around them in the fight to survive.

But to others traveling this path, community-building and sustainability practices will have great appeal. Things like permaculture, learning to live as an ally with the environment rather than a plunderer of it. They are aware that in the beginning there will be violent pains and struggles to be driven through, but just like any new birth, they know that joy awaits them on the other side of the terrors, and that knowledge gives them the strength to go on. They will follow this hopeful direction and look for how they can help guide and support fellow survivors along the journey to rebuilding a new world on the ruins of the old, rather than how they can sustain themselves by victimizing the few who remain.

Those who can, do; those who can’t, die.

The Difficulty of Decision

Upon reaching the collapse awareness of an adult frog in our collective pot, it is important to mention that there is also the possibility of serious personal distress at this point. If newly adult frogs cannot choose the path of resistance for whatever reason but are also put off by the idea of settlement as a response to the crisis they are now aware of, then they are truly in a difficult situation. There are not many other ladders out of this pit of despair. If they remain trapped like this between a rock and a hard place for too long, life can begin to seem even more bleak than the reality of it warrants, and violence against either society or oneself may begin to seem like the only possible escape. They will increasingly compound the severity of the predicament faced by the world until is it just too horrible to live with any longer, and this could drive them to pre-emptive actions irrationally. It is usually characterized by exhibiting a little too much of a doomer mentality and expressing things in a more horrible light as a truth far beyond that which is recognized by even the most pessimistic of their fellow frogs. It is important to not only keep watch on one’s progress, but that of others as well, and to try and lend support to those struggling with finding their direction.

Being collapse-aware sucks the further you progress in that awareness. And as anything other than the vast multitude of eggs out there, trying to explain that awareness and conviction to others can be extremely frustrating. Eggs don’t even have the capacity to listen, I mean, they are just eggs, and as for tadpoles, they just don’t want to hear it. Willful avoidance of that which may be painful or depressing is hardly uncommon. Usually, the effort to enlighten them, to help those eggs and tadpoles grow, feels like a wasted effort, but we were all there at some point, even if that point was childhood. We should keep trying, however.

One thing is for sure. Whatever stage you are in, or which path you have chosen, getting through the times leading up to, during, and after collapse will require all of us to cooperate on making wise decisions in difficult times, and spreading the word about it is one of those decisions.

Good luck, my Wasteland frogs.